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1945 in the United States
Centuries:	19th century – 20th century – 21st century
Decades:	1920s  1930s  – 1940s –  1950s  1960s
Years:	1942 1943 1944 – 1945 – 1946 1947 1948
Flag:	48 stars (1912 – 1959)

Events from the year 1945 in the United States. World War II ends this year following the surrender of Germany in May and Japan in September.

Events

January

• January – American troops cross the Siegfried Line into Belgium.
• January 20 – Franklin D. Roosevelt is inaugurated to an unprecedented 4th term as President of the United States. No president before, or since, has ever reached a third term in office.
• January 30 – Raid at Cabanatuan: 121 American soldiers and 800 Filipino guerrillas free 813 American POWs from the Japanese-held camp at Cabanatuan City, Philippines.
• January 31 – Eddie Slovik is executed by firing squad for desertion, the first American soldier since the American Civil War, and last to date to be executed for this offense.

February

February 23: Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima (Joe Rosenthal / The Associated Press)

• February 2 – WW II: President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill leave to meet with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin at the Yalta Conference.
• February 3 – United States forces capture Manila, Philippines from the Japanese Imperial Army.
• February 4 – WW II: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin begin the Yalta Conference (ends February 11).
• February 7 – WW II: General Douglas MacArthur returns to Manila.
• February 16 – Combined American and Filipino forces recapture the Bataan Peninsula.
• February 16 – American and Filipino ground forces land on Corregidor Island in the Philippines.
• February 19 – WW II – Battle of Iwo Jima: About 30,000 United States Marines land on Iwo Jima.
• February 23 – The American and Filipino troops enter Intramuros, Manila.
• February 23 – The capital of the Philippines, Manila, is liberated by combined American and Filipino ground troops.
• February 23 – Battle of Iwo Jima: A group of United States Marines reach the top of Mount Suribachi on the island and are photographed raising the American flag. The photo, Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima (taken by Joe Rosenthal), later wins a Pulitzer Prize.

March

• March 1 – Franklin D. Roosevelt gives what will be his last address to a joint session of Congress, reporting on the Yalta Conference.
• March 2 – Former U.S. Vice-President Henry Agard Wallace starts his term of office as U.S. Secretary of Commerce, serving under President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
• March 3 – The United States and Filipino troops take Manila, Philippines.
• March 7 – WW II: American troops seize the bridge over the Rhine River at Remagen, Germany and begin to cross.
• March 15 – The 17th Academy Awards ceremony is held, broadcast via radio for the first time. Best Picture goes to Going My Way.
• March 19 – Off the coast of Japan, bombers hit the aircraft carrier USS Franklin, killing about 800 of her crewmen and crippling the ship.
• March 24 – Sylvester the cat, a cartoon character, debuts in Life with Feathers
• March 29 – The "Clash of Titans": George Mikan and Bob Kurland duel at Madison Square Garden. OSU defeats DePaul 52–44.
• March 30 – Alger Hiss congratulated in Moscow for his part in bringing about the Western betrayal at the Yalta Conference.

April

April 12: FDR dies in office; Harry S. Truman becomes President

• April 1 – WW II – Battle of Okinawa: United States troops land on Okinawa.
• April 4 – WW II: American troops liberate their first Nazi concentration camp, Ohrdruf death camp in Germany.
• April 7 – The only flight of the German ramming unit known as the Sonderkommando Elbe takes place, resulting in the loss of some 24 B-17s and B-24s of the United States Eighth Air Force.
• April 12 – United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933–1945) dies suddenly at Warm Springs, Georgia; Vice President Harry S. Truman (1945–1953) becomes the 33rd President.
• April 18 – the American war correspondent Ernie Pyle is killed by Japanese machine gun fire on the island of Ie Shima off Okinawa.
• April 19 – Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel, a musical play based on Ferenc Molnár's Liliom, opens on Broadway and becomes their second long-running stage classic.
• April 25 – WW II – Elbe Day: United States and Soviet troops link up at the Elbe River, cutting Germany in two.
• April 25 – Founding negotiations for the United Nations begin in San Francisco.
• April 27 – U.S. Ordinance troops find the coffins of Frederick Wilhelm I, Frederick the Great, Paul Von Hindenburg, and his wife.

May

• May 3 – Rocket scientist Wernher von Braun and 120 members of his team surrender to U.S. forces (later going on to help to start the U.S. space program).
• May 5 – A Japanese balloon bomb kills five children and a grown woman, Elsie Mitchell, near Bly, Oregon, when it explodes as they drag it from the woods. They are the only people killed by an enemy attack on the American mainland during World War II.
• May 5 – The US 11th Armored Division liberates the prisoners of Mauthausen concentration camp, including Simon Wiesenthal.
• May 5 – Ezra Pound, the poet and author, is arrested by American soldiers in Italy for treason.
• May 8 – Victory in Europe Day: The Allies accept Germany's unconditional surrender.
• May 9 – Hermann Göring is captured by the United States Army; Norway arrests the traitor Vidkun Quisling.

June

July

• July 8 – WW II: Harry S. Truman is informed that Japan will talk peace if it can retain the reign of the Emperor.^[1]
• July 16 – The Trinity test detonates the world's first atomic bomb.
• July 21 – WW II: President Harry S. Truman approves the order for atomic bombs to be used against Japan.^[1]
• July 28 – An U.S. Army Air Forces B-25 bomber crashes into the Empire State Building, killing 14 people, including all on board.
• July 30 – WW II: The heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis is hit and sunk by torpedoes from the Japanese submarine I-58 in the Philippine Sea. Some 900 survivors jump into the sea and are adrift for up to four days. Nearly 600 die before help arrives. Captain Charles B. McVay III of the cruiser is later court-martialed and convicted.

August

August 6: Atomic bombing of Hiroshima

• August 6 – WW II: Atomic bombing of Hiroshima: The United States drops an atomic bomb (nicknamed "Little Boy") on Hiroshima, Japan, at 8:15 a.m. (local time).
• August 7 – President Harry Truman announces the successful bombing of Hiroshima with the atomic bomb, while returning from the Potsdam Conference aboard the U.S. Navy heavy cruiser USS Augusta (CA-31) in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
• August 8 – The United Nations Charter is ratified by the United States Senate, and this nation becomes the third one to join the new international organization.
• August 9 – The United States drops an atomic bomb nicknamed "Fat Man" on Nagasaki, Japan, at 11:02 a.m. (local time).
• August 14 (August 15 in Japan) – Emperor Hirohito announces Japan's surrender on the radio. The United States calls this day V-J Day (Victory in Japan). This ends the period of Japanese expansionism and begins the period of Occupied Japan.

September

• September 2 – World War II ends: The final official surrender of Japan is accepted by the Supreme Allied Commander, General Douglas MacArthur, and Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz for the United States, and delegates from Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, China, and others from a Japanerse delegation led by Mamoru Shigemitsu, on board the American battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay (but in Japan August 14 is recognized as the day the Pacific War ended).
• September 2 – Japanese general Tomoyuki Yamashita surrenders to Filipino and American forces at Kiangan, Ifugao.
• September 5 – The Russian code clerk Igor Gouzenko comes forward with numerous documents implicating the Soviet Union in numerous spy rings in North America: both in the United States and in Canada.
• September 5 – Iva Toguri D'Aquino, a Japanese-American suspected of being wartime radio propagandist "Tokyo Rose", is arrested in Yokohama.
• September 8 – American troops occupy southern Korea, while the Soviet Union occupies the north, with the dividing line being the 38th parallel of latitude. This arrangement proves to be the indirect beginning of a divided Korea.
• September 9 – The first actual case of (a computer) bug being found, is a moth lodged in a relay of a Harvard Mark II computer at the Naval Weapons Center in Dahlgren, Virginia.

October

• October 3–10 – The Detroit Tigers win the World Series against the Chicago Cubs, who haven't made it to the World Series since.
• October 5 – A strike by the Set Decorator's Union in Hollywood results in a riot.
• October 23 – Jackie Robinson signs a contract with the Montreal Royals.
• October 29 – At Gimbel's Department Store in New York City, the first ballpoint pens go on sale at $12.50 each.

November

• November 15 – Harry S. Truman, Clement Attlee, and Mackenzie King call for a U.N. Atomic Energy Commission.^[1]
• November 16 – Cold War: The United States controversially imports 88 German scientists to help in the production of rocket technology.

December

• December 4 – By a vote of 65–7, the United States Senate approves the entry of the United States into the United Nations.
• December 21 – General George S. Patton dies from injuries sustained in a car accident on December 9.

Undated

• The U.S. House of Representatives calls for unrestricted Jewish immigration to Palestine in order to establish a Jewish commonwealth there.
• The Berklee College of Music is founded in Boston.
• Russian-American physicist Vladimir Kosma Zworykin coauthors Electron Optics and the Electron Microscope.

Ongoing events

• World War II ends with the surrender of Germany on May 8, and Japan on September 2.

Births

• David M. Alexander
• Patch Adams

Deaths

• April 12 – US President Franklin Roosevelt

See also

• Timeline of World War II

References

External links

• Media related to 1945 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons